Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Some of my blogging colleagues have come up with amazing plans for National Poetry Month starting tomorrow. I'll be posting daily in April, for the third consecutive year. This year, I'm planning a poetry-book-review-a-day on new 2009 poetry books for kids, with sample poems, activities for kids, and poet interview tidbits. Should be fun! Meanwhile, here’s the lowdown on a few other poetry-centric blogs and their plans for April, just FYI.

Elaine Magliaro at Wild Rose Reader will be giving away children's poetry books as prizes again this year. She has a variety of posting plans including theme-related posts on haiku, cats, dogs, birds, and geography; interviews with Alice Schertle, Julie Larios, Kris George, Linda Ashman, book reviews, and perhaps a poetry research report. Check out her new solo blog called Political Verses, too.

Anastasia Suen at Pencil Talk will be collecting school poems written by children throughout April and posting one each day. Of course there are many other blogs that will be celebrating poetry in all kinds of ways during the month of April. See you online!

Roses are red,blogs are sublimeLet the postings begin,it’s poetry time!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

I’m posting from the Bologna Children’s Book Fair where I have been immersed in the amazing literature for children being published in countries all across the world. I thought I was a bit of an expert in this area—until I came here! How humbling it is to mix with publishers, promoters, authors, illustrators, and others who create and support this field of literature for kids in Korea (a featured country), Italy (our gracious host), Spain (in four languages no less) and beyond. And of course, there is poetry in every place, too.

I was representing Bookbird, the journal of international children’s literature at the IBBY booth (the International Board on Books for Young People) and I met many, many people who share the same goals as we do (literacy and literature for all). The booth next door featured the International Youth Library based in Munich, the site founded by Jella Lepman (creator of IBBY too) and they were showcasing their recently announced “White Ravens” list, their selection of the best 250 books from over 48 countries (in 32 languages) published in the last year or so. This may be the ultimate “best children’s books in the world” list!

And what is the best children’s poetry in the world? Here’s the list of nearly a dozen books gleaned from their roster. (Although I examined each one, I couldn’t read them all, of course, since only 4 are in English. How I wish I could!)

Wright, Danielle (Ed). 2008. My Village; Rhymes from Around the World. Wellington, NZ: Gecko Press*Bilingual rhymes presented in various languages and English in a colorful, inviting, multicultural context

Sayer, Viv (Ed). 2008. Poems of Love and Longing. Llandysul: Pont Books.*Perfect small teen-friendly size with a range of mostly serious poems by ten British poets

Cheng, Andrea. 2008. Where the Steps Are. Honesdale, PA: Wordsong.*Verse novel for younger readers about a class and their yearlong efforts to save their school

And of course I must share a sample poem. This one, in particular, touched me. It’s from the British collection, Poems of Love and Longing and is the final entry in a mini-group of poems that conclude the book.

Prayerby Susan Richardson

Spirit, use me today,not in some miraclethat would make others marveland would make me proud.

Not in the word of wisdomthat would stay in the mindand make me always remembered.

Not in the heroic actthat would change the world for the betterand me for the worse.

But in the mundane miraclesof honesty and truththat keep the sky from falling

In the unremembered quiet wordsthat keep a soul on the path

And in the unnoticed actsthat keep the world movingslowly closer to the light.

The complete annotated list of these and all the 250 titles is (or will soon be) available on the IYL Web site (ijb.de). Read more about this amazing repository of 600,000 of the world’s children’s books in a historic castle in Germany. (They also offer fellowships for scholars who want to study there!)

Friday, March 20, 2009

One of my students stumbled upon a mention of World Poetry Day that was new info to me. Apparently, it’s that time again: March 21. According to the ReadWriteThink curriculum Web site, “Believed to have its origin in the 1930s, World Poetry Day is now celebrated in hundreds of countries around the world. This day provides a perfect opportunity to examine poets and their craft in the classroom. In 1999, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) also designated March 21 as World Poetry Day."

I’m heading off to Bologna, Italy today for my very first trip to the world famous Bologna Children’s Book Fair. I’ll be attending in my role as the new (co) editor of Bookbird, the journal on international children’s literature, and I’m hoping to learn, learn, learn. I also hope to find some wonderful, new international poetry for young people. Wouldn’t that be fun?

In the mean time, I’d also like to share an excerpt from my March Book Links“Everyday Poetry” column focused on multi-media options for poetry. If you’re looking for fresh ways to approach poetry with young people, you might consider multi-media methods for experiencing the visual and aural qualities of poetry. Using popular Internet sites, CDs, and a variety of software, you can lead kids in exploring the imagery, emotion, and language of poetry in ways that are creative, playful and multi-sensory.

VIDEO--Look to the Internet for many examples of poetry in various visual formats. On Teacher Tube.com, you can find school-friendly video vignettes of young people reading poetry aloud, including their own original poetry, as well as teachers presenting a variety of poetry lessons…. Nearly everyone enjoys searching You Tube.com for fun, but it can also be a great site for poetry resources. One new trend is the video book talk or book trailer. Some are created by the poet, some by the publisher, and some by fans—a project possibility for kids, teachers, and librarians.

AUDIO--There are several places to find audio adaptations of poetry for young people. Many are available as CDs accompanying print books…. Many poetry-related web sites include audiofiles among their links, such as The Academy of American Poets, Poetry Magazine.com, Poets and Writers, Inc., LibriVox.org for amateur recordings of books in the public domain, and the Favorite Poem Project …. More and more children’s poets are making audio recordings of themselves reading their own poetry available on their personal web sites…. As children experiment with technological tools of all kinds, they can be very savvy about finding creative ways to express themselves through poetry.

For examples of many of these sites and sources, check out the rest of the column. And once again, we have a lovely poem to accompany the column—a spring gem by Bobbi Katz. It’s beautifully formatted on the Book Links page for educator use.

Onion Snow by Bobbi Katz

I wake to heavy quiet this April morning:a special weighted sound.Outside my window snowflakes fallsoftly, softly feathering the ground-softly, softly bearding the daffodils.Grandma always called it onion snow.Arriving when wild onions have started to grow,those foolish fat flakes don't seem to knowthey are too late for winterand misfits in spring."Come listen to that onion snow!"she would have said."Have you ever heardsuch a silence??”

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Friday the 13th is a good day to focus on poetry about magic, luck, superstitions and beliefs, dreams and nightmares. I gathered just a few poetry books on these topics for my list below. And brand new this year is another gem from—guess who?—Lee Bennett Hopkins. (He is having a very good year!)

Sky Magic is a new 2009 anthology due out next week with 14 poems about the sky, sun, moon, and stars illustrated by Mariusz Stawarski. It’s a gorgeous book, another perfect pairing of artist and anthologist. Every single poem gets its own full color, double page spread with a color drenched landscape showcasing each poem. Poets include new names and old, such as Sarah Hansen, Lyn Littlefield Hoopes, Ashley Bryan, Alice Schertle, Ann Whitford Paul, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Tony Johnston, Georgia Heard, David McCord, James Guthrie, Carl Sandburg, and even Tennessee Williams. Here’s one sampling of the lyrical language of these selections:

Legendsby Avis Harley

In the language of starslie stories of old brilliant legends told; retold.

Spelling out sagas,spilling out light, a mythical manuscript filling the night.

Beautiful! What a great read aloud collection, for breakfast table or bedtime sharing, as the poems begin with sunrise and end with sunset, in suitable-for-framing scenes in deep blues and violets, vibrant orange and gold.

P.S.I’m happy to note a fun addition to my list of poems about superstitions with a new voice from Britain: Graham Denton, a writer, anthologist and small press publisher of poetry for children in the UK who has authored the poetry collection, Silly Superstitions (Macmillan Children's Books). Check it out!

Friday, March 06, 2009

I’m a city gal. I love the hustle and bustle of cities, people walking everywhere, cars and cabs honking, shops and restaurants of all kinds, museums and theaters—all of it. So, when I saw Lee Bennett Hopkins’s new collection of poetry, City I Love, I was excited to see it, get it, and read it. And I think it’s completely wonderful.

There are 18 original Hopkins poems (that’s right, this is not an anthology of many poets this time) and I recognized a few of Lee’s poems from years gone by, alongside many new gems. Together, they create a wonderful cityscape of the sights, sounds, and smells in a variety of poetic forms from rhyming to free verse to haiku.

Add to that the genius of the book’s art and design. New Yorker artist Marcellus Hall is an inspired choice as illustrator and he has created a backdrop that provides a story frame that grounds the poems without limiting them one bit. The end pages show a world map with 18 cities labeled across multiple continents. Upon close examination, one sees that each of these cities is the locale for one of the poems. Identifying which is which is so fun!

Plus, a backpack-carrying brown dog and a blue Parisian pigeon appear on each page, having adventures and encounters that young readers will pick up on before the grownups do.

The poetry starts with a city anthem and ends with a kind of city lullaby. In between, we celebrate city summers and city winters, city skyscrapers and big bridges, city sounds and city lights, taxis and subways, and city zoos and merry-go-rounds. The first person voice is strong and immediate and the language is spare, rhythmic and lyrical. Here’s a sampling:

City Lightsby Lee Bennett Hopkins

Blazing lights

flickerflashglittergleamtwinklesparklebedazzlebeam

so

brilliantlybright.

Reasonswhycitystaysawakeall night.

Lee was kind enough to answer a few quick interview questions to give us a bit of backstory on this wonderful new collection of his own writing. Enjoy.

What prompted this particular poetry book with its focus on cities? How did you decide on that theme? And on doing a solo collection, rather than an anthology?

It is odd. I lived near or in cities my entire life. I worked on CITY I LOVE after moving to Cape Coral, Florida, a rather suburban little place on earth. I guess I had to leave New York City to do this collection.There are very few books of poetry reflecting city life. I knew I had to do this book. Cities are a vibrant part of America, of the world.

This collection has a lovely variety of forms and rhythms and structures— even a haiku poem. Was this a conscious element in writing the new poems and selecting the previous ones? Can you describe that writing/selection process?

I love experimenting with form...rhyme, free verse, list poems, haiku, et. al. Since city life is so diverse I thought it would be a good idea to include a diverse amount of poetic form.

I wish I could describe my writing process. Frankly I don't know how it all comes about. It just does, thankfully! It all begins with imagery -- looking up at a skyscraper being built and seeing men and women eating from lunch boxes atop a girder...trying to get a taxi cab in the rain...observing many faces on a subway...wishing I could pet a seal...being dazzled and amazed at city lights at night. It is the imagery that comes first, then the writing process. Oft times a verse will come full-blown; other times it is working with a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus...two of the best tools a poet can have.

Did you have any input on the selection of the illustrator or on any of the art? What do you think about the artist’s interpretations of the poems and the connecting “travel” thread?

Like most books, authors have little input as to an illustrator. A writer writes, an artist draws. It is usually up to an editor to select an artist. When I first saw sketches from Marcellus Hall for CITY I LOVE, I knew he was the right artist. A jazz musician living in the midst of New York City? What could be better? Poetry and music belong together. It was the idea of my brilliant editor, Tamar Brazis at Abrams, in consultation with Marcellus, to bring the text out of New York City and focus on cities around the world. What an inspired idea! And why not? There are pigeons in Paris, bright lights in Tokyo, snow in Moscow, balconies on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, and "mile-long skyscrapers" in the midst of glorious New York.

Adding that winsome pooch and his companion bird to every page brings added fun and excitement to the whole of the book.

CITY I LOVE is my ode to cities everywhere. It also seems like an omen coming out this year, the year I receive the National Council of Teachers of English Excellence in Poetry for Children Award... an Award I shall cherish for many reasons including coming from its founder, Bee Cullinan, who established the Award in honor of her young son who was tragically killed, and having been present at the beginning of the Award while serving on the Board of Directors at NCTE in the late l970's, and having Chaired the Award Committee twice, the years Aileen Fisher received the Award (l978) and Valerie Worth (1991).I am shamefully awed and proud to be among such a distinguished list of poets, each of whom I know personally and love.

MINI-GUIDE to CITY I LOVEFinally, here’s a little mini-guide of 5 activities to accompany this wonderful book.1. Start with the map. Identify each of the cities (and it’s country and continent). Challenge the kids to figure out which poem is set in which city. Use the poem references and landmarks pictured.

2. Here are a few choral reading options. Several of the poems have a repeated line that can be a “refrain” for the kids to join in on, including:• “Sing a Song of Cities” (“Cities will sing back to you.”)• “Subways are People” (“Subways are people.”)• “City I Love” (“In the city I live in—city I love”)In “Taxi” and “Get ‘Em Here” there are lines in quotes for kids to shout out.For the poems “City” and “Subways are People,” break the kids into two groups to read them aloud antiphonally, in a back-and-forth way. Record the read alouds.

3. Create jazz dog and Parisian pigeon cut-out characters of your own as poem puppets to pair with the read aloud, display with the book, and use to inspire new poems about new cities.

4. Challenge the kids to work in pairs or as a group to compose a poem about THEIR city or town, noting the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, landmarks, and feelings that the kids associate with their homeplace. Create a collage illustration or mural to go with the poem.

5. For more place-based poetry, be sure and look for Lee’s anthologies with a focus on geography including Got Geography! (Greenwillow 2006), My America: A Poetry Atlas of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2000), Home to Me: Poems Across America (Orchard, 2002). For more pictures and more poems on cities and landmarks, find J. Patrick Lewis’s books, A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme (Dial Books 2002), Monumental Verses (National Geographic, 2005), andCastles, Old Stone Poems (Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press 2006) co-authored with Rebecca Kai Dotlich, as well as Diane Siebert’s Tour America: A Journey Through Poems and Art (Chronicle Books 2006) and Jane Yolen’s Sacred Places (Harcourt Brace, 1996).

Sunday, March 01, 2009

I’ve gotten bogged down recently and behind on my poetry news. Please forgive me! I may be the very last person to toot the Cybils horn, but I wanted to anyway. I've had the honor of being invited to participate in the poetry category every year, this year as a judge in the final step. (My fellow judges were a delight and and have also blogged about our process and our choice. Thanks!)

For anyone new to the Cybils, it’s a loose acronym for Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards, focused on celebrating books that exhibit both literary quality and kid appeal. They begin with nominations open to absolutely anyone. Then five nominating committee members read the nominated books (with different committees in multiple categories, from poetry to fiction to nonfiction to graphic novels). Then another panel of five judges selects a single winner.

This year’s best poetry book for young people is Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye, a poetic hybrid of delicious poetry and lyrical prose poems on wide-ranging themes blending science and observation alongside personal memoir and political challenge. There are ideas buzzing here that young people have probably felt in their gut, but may not have verbalized. Isn't this what poetry is supposed to do?

And just to round up the entire Cybils poetry celebration, here’s the history, with 17 wonderful and varied poetry gems to find, buy, read, share, and promote!

2008 Cybils (31 initial nominations)Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye (WINNER)America at War edited by Lee Bennett HopkinsImaginary Menagerie by Julie LariosMore than Friends: Poems from Him and Her by Sara Holbrook and Allan WolfOn the Farm by David Elliott

2007 Cybils(42 initial nominations)This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness by Joyce Sidman (WINNER)Animal Poems by Valerie WorthGood Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy SchlitzHere’s a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry edited by Jane YolenPoems in Black and White by Kate MillerTwist: Yoga Poems by Janet S. WongYour Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath by Stephanie Hemphill

2006 Cybils (26 initial nominations)Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow by Joyce Sidman (WINNER)Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich by Adam RexHandsprings by Douglas FlorianJazz by Walter Dean MyersTour America: A Journey Through Poems and Art by Diane Siebert

About Me

Sylvia Vardell is a professor and author of the ALA bestseller POETRY ALOUD HERE, also POETRY PEOPLE, CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN ACTION, and the co-editor of THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY series (for K-5 and for 6-8), as well as the first digital anthologies of poetry for young people, the POETRY TAG TIME series-- all in collaboration with poet Janet Wong. Vardell is also the poetry columnist for ALA’s BOOK LINKS magazine. A frequent speaker at conferences, Vardell chaired the NCTE Poetry Award committee and has served as a consultant to the Poetry Foundation.